Hello everyone! Welcome back!
Once I realized I was an emotional eater, I wanted to know WHY I was eating when my body didn't need fuel.
This was not as simple to discover as it might seem from the outside.
I had thoughts like, “Well just pay attention! Why do you want to eat that half-stale brownie that's leftover from the drug rep lunch from yesterday?” The tone of that inner voice was not always very kind.
Through life coaching, I learned exactly how to figure out why I was overeating.
The very first step is awareness or consciousness. And by consciousness, I don't mean that I was actually physically unconscious before. I have this funny mental image of me just going through my day, completely passed out, and totally unaware of what's going on.
Of course we're physically conscious, but most of the time we aren't conscious, or aware, of what's going on for us emotionally. We live our lives completely on the surface: surface thoughts, surface emotions, surface experiences.
We don't have the skills to know how to dig deeper to learn how these thoughts and emotions are creating our results in our lives, good or bad.
So how do we become more aware?
Humans have the unique ability to observe our own thoughts and evaluate them. It's how we're able to talk to ourselves! The term in psychology for this ability is metacognition.
We can use this ability to our advantage by taking on a “watcher” or “observer” role. We start to watch or observe our thoughts.
Every day, we have anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 thoughts flying through our heads. Talk about an information super-highway! But we aren't consciously aware of all the thoughts we're having at any given moment. All of these tens of thousands of thoughts are coming together to create our reality in life.
So we just practice being aware of what we're thinking in any given moment. Especially if we are reaching for food or alcohol. This may seem a bit challenging at first, but with practice, it becomes much easier over time.
At first, you might find it easiest to do when you're waiting around for something, doing some mindless activity like folding laundry or washing dishes, or while you're showering or getting dressed.
Watch for patterns of thoughts, meaning thoughts that you think over and over again throughout the day.
Examples of looping or repetitive thoughts might be:
“I'm too busy.”
“There's never enough time.”
“I'm too exhausted.”
“I have no self-control.”
“My body is disgusting.”
Now here is the key:
You must assume the watcher or observer position from a place of compassion, fascination, and curiosity. You're looking for patterns in your thinking, not evaluating whether these thoughts are good or bad.
This is not the time to beat yourself up because you keep thinking thoughts that don't serve you. When you beat yourself up, you are fighting against you, so YOU always lose. Nothing good or productive ever comes from beating yourself up.
So just start with noticing. Paying attention. Being open to seeing what's been there the whole time.
Next week, we'll talk about what to do with these thought patterns you've discovered.
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